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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

#223: Peter LaBarbera

Continuing the theme from the last couple of days, Peter LaBarbera is a relatively insane anti-gay bigot associated with WorldNetDaily, particularly notable for his complaint that there are just to many homosexuals on television. The fact that so many TV people are gay, LaBarbera contends, is the gay rights movements’ attempt at brainwashing children (and others) into thinking that gays are ordinary people with equal rights. A real cause for outrage, apparently. Furthermore, zeh gays are actually utilizing social media to infiltrate us with and organize their evil agenda.

LaBarbera is president of the group Americans for Truth [About Homosexuality] - which is really no more than a promoter of wild conspiracy theories. It is all about “the [apparently militaristically organized] gay agenda”, and rathershrill. Fighting the gay agenda is a tough fight, but one LaBarbera is apparently willing to fight.

His (official) main trouble with gay marriage is one of the more usual ones – it undermines the family. For LaBarbera, however, this seems to be an analytic claim.

Here's LaBarbera first arguing that gays want to remove freedom of speech, then lamenting how poor Christians are attacked using mean words by liberals, followed by attacking progressive Christians and saying that their faith is “heresy” for not condemning gays and lesbians. Clearly only the persecution complex is stronger than the lack of self-awareness for these people.

This one concerns not only LaBarbera, but LaBarbera is certainly among those who would rather that we shouldn't fight AIDS since helping people survive and avoid AIDS is the same as attempting to legitimize homosexuality.

Labarbera is at least always concerned about taking the moral highground and showing how being opposed to gay marriage and homosexuality is consistent with love and compassion, thereby showing how it is the homosexual lobby that is being mean and intolerant. Here he displays his love by saying that it is "reassuring" when gays are affected by violence and sexually transmitted diseases, just as Jesus would find it.

He also thinks that it is an the dark side is planning to homosexualize scouts throught "boy-boy homosexual promotion". The evidence for this claim is that some people are more tolerant of homosexuals, which apparently entails that this is their agenda in the logical space accessible to Labarbera.

Now LaBarbera actually blames God for the recent victories for the side of equality. Everyone seems to be against him, in other words. Except the Russians – LaBarbera is one of many theocons applauding the recent, draconian anti-gay laws in Russia.

(And here he claims that gays should take responsibility for the child abuse scandals in the Catholic church, because … because the gay rights movement obviously holds such power over the Catholic church.

Another example of LaBarbera trying to top any previous attempt to be as bigoted as possible. And here he attempts to invoke MLK in support for his bigotry.

Before the Supreme Court case he aptly warned that "if SCOTUS legalizes gay marriage" we would need to prepare for divine punishment. Not very surprising, but it does, once again, illustrate how fundies, denialist and crackpots refuse to take failed predictions as evidence against their hypothesis, thus showing their failures as critical thinkers.

Well, if he has no success in the US (he hasn't gotten much further with his desire to have the Russian anti-gay laws implemented in the US), perhaps the solution is to take his efforts abroad. Here he is among American bigots who urge Jamaica to imprison gay people. Just because he loves them, of course.